The Sunday morning news. [volume] (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1886-1891, 1887-06-12
HOW NOVELS ARE MADE.
The Process of CompOsitIon-How Ideas
are Picked Up-situatIons.

|
AS far as authors know, the process of
composition is much the same always,
though few indulge in eccentric habits.
They pick up ideas as they go on, and in
his new letters we learn how Mr.. Thack-
cray selected notions for 'Pendennis,"
from his daily life, even while that work
was coming out in monthly numbers. Nor
do any authors know exactly what they are
| going to say when they sit down to write.
| Allpens. though the penmakers are una
ware OF it, have familiar spirits resident in
them, which whisper ideas to the author as
the pen goes on. He never dreamed of
these ideas TIL he had the magical pen in
his hand, the pen marmurs them, and he
accepts them, and often Qike Thackeray,
when he made Becky admire Rawdon for
beating Lord Steyne) he wonders at his
own cleverness. 1t is not his OVID, it is
given to him from without, he feels, and
that is why he can never explain chow it is
done Or, if this theory of the lutin of the
| pen be secuted, we suppose that the brain
gets heated, excited, borne above itself, and
so when the brain gets cooled down, the
author becomes acommonplace mortal and
forgets how he got into fairyland. There
fore, they never can explain how their
works are written, though, perhaps, they
often could trace back, If they cared the
steps of the association of ideas.
Apparently, novelists sometimes begin
! with set of characters, and think over
them until they begin to move and act, as
she table moves if people sit round il with
their fingers on it. In that way, perhaps,
vanity Fair" was invented. Thackeray
n I'D a Becky in his mind, and he composed
Emmy out of a collection of living models.
Then, perhaps, he set to work wondering
how these ladies would act and react on
each others fortunes. Chen more queer
characters old Sir Pitt, old Miss Crawley
the notorious Lord Steyns, end SO on-in-
sisted on joining the dance. But there is
no puzzle to be explained, 10 astonishing
situation to be accounted for, as in novels
of the type of Gaboriau's.
Another mode of birth, we may cobiec-
ture, was that of ''Bleak House. Dickens
seems to have said to himself, Now let us
have fling at some national abuse, and
he found that great palpable c9ckshy, the
court of chancery, before him. So the
| story had to set forth the evils of chancerv.
| as displayed in the sorrows of set of
worthy ruined people. Then Leigh Hunt
| came III the authors way, and promptly
Mr.. Harold Skimpole was devised and
| joined the dance, and SO on. Probably
! cheap novels of murder and mystery are
written by devlsing strange situation, and
working back from that to invent WAYS in
which it might have happened. You intro
| duce gentleman who finds the fire smok-
| irg dreadfully at breakfast He examines
| the chimney and finds in it the body, head
| downward, of lovely girl of 49, How in
the world did she get there? You work
back till you have invented plausible
theory of the whimsical circumstance, and
that theory is your novel. Gaboriau often
worked back as far as the revolution or the
edlet OF Nantes, If not the crusades, before
he could get room to turn round in. And
no wonder, for if you will introduce duke
shooting all the company in a suburban
pot house, his motives, if honorable, must
be as remote as the intentions of the
young lover in the story.
Any novelist can tell us things like this
about his art, just as Theophiie Gautier
told some one that he wrote in red, black
and green inks to divert and cheer his
labors. ssWhen you reach the sixth slip
you shall try the red ink, he would say to
himself. and found it great comforts.
indeed, it is. But Theophile did not get his
style from his colored inks, nor Shakes
peare his Hamlet from "lhe History of
Hamblet." Probably ''the common stead
fast Ounce" as Milton says, of the period,
screamed that Shakespeare was thief, and
that anybody could piagiarlze the s'Hlstory
of Hamblet" But the Ounce never did so
himself, nor did his friends, and only
learned people like DR.. Furuival know
of these moral virulent obscurities. Lon
don News.